Written After the Collected Works of Bai Letian書白樂天集後
予嘗以爲殘年老境消日之樂。莫若讀白樂天詩。時或彈加耶琴耳。加耶琴。蓋古秦箏之類。但欠一絃耳。絃不傷指。其聲切切。令衰情易蕩也。白公詩。讀不滯口。其辭平澹和易。意若對面諄諄詳告者。雖不見當時事。想親覩之也。是亦一家體也。古之人或以白公詩。頗涉淺近。有以囁嚅翁目之者。此必詩人相輕之說耳。何必爾也。其若琵琶行長恨歌。當時已盛傳華夷。至於樂工倡妓。以不學此歌行爲恥。若涉近之辭。能至是耶。嗚呼。凡譏議樂天者。皆不知樂天者也。吾不取已。但加耶琴。予於老境好彈耳。不可令人人皆同吾嗜也。彈亦不工。可笑。
I have long held that for the pleasure of passing the days in the old age of one's remaining years there is nothing like reading the poems of Bai Letian (白樂天), and that there is only, now and then, the plucking of the gayageum besides. The gayageum is in the main of the kind of the zheng (箏) of old Qin (秦), and wants only one string of it. Its strings do not hurt the fingers, and its sound is tender, so that it easily sets a withered heart astir.
Master Bai's poems do not catch in the mouth as one reads them; their words are even and plain, peaceable and easy, so that the sense is as though he were face to face with one, telling it out thoroughly and in detail. Though I did not see the affairs of that time, it is as if I had seen them myself; and this too is his having made a style of his own in his own way.
Among men of old there were some who, holding Master Bai's poems to be rather shallow and commonplace, pointed at him as a dithering old man; this can only be the way poets make light of one another. How should it be necessarily so? Such pieces as the Song of the Pipa (琵琶行) and the Song of Everlasting Sorrow (長恨歌) were already in that day handed about widely in China and on the frontiers, so that even musicians and courtesans counted it a shame not to have learned these songs. Had they been shallow, commonplace words, could they have come to this?
Ah, all who speak ill of Letian are those who do not know Letian. I do not take up their words. As for the gayageum, it is only that I am fond of plucking it in my old age, and I cannot make every man share my delight. My plucking too is clumsy, which is a laughable thing.